Some third parties put a high value on the personal data that an individual puts on various connected systems that are part of his everyday life. The use that such third parties can make goes from market studies to targeted advertising to data mining and the like.
So far, there has been no framework or structure to:
1) enable the user to keep full control of his personal data;
2) convince the user that he takes no disproportionate risk in giving away such data;
3) as a further possible step, formally monetize the personal data posted, thanks to the trust of the user, as direct benefit to said user.
The quality of data bases can be adversely affected by distrust of individuals. In the case of a census for instance, some free-thinking users adopt anti-establishment behaviors by providing false data, just because they do not trust the governmental entity that is requesting them to provide these data.
When the data provided is clearly out-of-range, cleaning the results flow is relatively easy and can be done in an automated way, for example by simple cross-checks between responses provided by a single user. However, when the free-thinker is more sophisticated and knows how to outfox the automated checks, there is very little that can be done to obtain true data and a resulting good quality of aggregated data bases.
There is therefore a need for a system that is designed to give full and continued control of his data by a user, gain the trust of the average individual, encouraging such individual to become an open-minded and trustful user of such system.
The problem has become more acute with the increased popularity, especially among young adults, of social networks. The managers of a number of such social networks tend have little consideration for any future disadvantages of the lack of experience of these young adults vis-à-vis the perception problems that a visitor of such social networks may encounter.
For example, a careless youngster can post on his personal storage, hosted by a social network, some visuals that he, on second thought or years after, would rather restrict access to. Such visuals can be for instance videos or photographs shot during a private party, during which alcohol, or more generally substances able to modify the state of consciousness, were ingested of inhaled.
When said careless youngster becomes a graduate in search of a job, the fact that a social network did grant access, by non-restricted or not enough restricted audiences, to clues of said way of life illustrated by the afore-mentioned visuals can be a disadvantage in finding a desired job.
If said youngster embraces a political career, the backlash can be even more severe, with evidence of a past life as a young man or woman being displayed by the press to a large public, especially a senior or elderly public with little inclination to forgiveness, thus undermining the credibility of the person in question, even though that person may have grown up and regrets his past behavior as a youngster. The continued storing, in out-of-reach databases, of extracts of postings made by youngsters can thus become very detrimental to their professional or political future.
The problem is made more serious by the fact that the managers of social networks sometimes have a tendency to over-protect their organization, should they become aware of data ownership issues, by altering the legal terms applying to the individual members of a given social network.
In such a case, a lack of consideration for the interests of such individual members can result in severe damage to said interests. For instance, legal conditions are sometimes modified without notice, claiming ownership by the network of any and all data posted on the individual's personal storage.
Even if the information on such a change in legal terms is communicated to subscribers, there is a high probability that a vast majority of the younger users will not react and therefore implicitly accept such change. And even if some react and demand a deletion of the incriminated data, they face the perspective of a costly legal action against said social network, with uncertain success. The cost to an individual of such legal action, as compared to the often disproportionate resources available to the social network as a defendant, can deter the individual from starting such action at all, entailing a sense of frustration on his part.
The number of cases where the credibility, or personal life, or professional future an individual was undermined, or deteriorated, or compromised is on the rise, and so is the press coverage of such stories, as well as the resulting awareness of the public.
With the surge in this number of cases, a consequence of the afore-mentioned facts is an increased defiance vis-à-vis social networks in the public at large. However, the social networks are trendy and gaining momentum among the younger public. This makes them unavoidable to a large extent to ambitious personalities, who do not always realize the danger they represent for their future social life.